This is too cool not to link: The Inner Life of the Cell
This short video shows animations of some of the chemical processes that occur inside living cells. I only recognized a handful, but they are all beautiful and surreal. The focus is on the behaviour of lymphocytes in the presence of inflammation.
[Update: 13 December 2007] The links above had become outdated. As of today, they are repaired.
Author: Milan
In the spring of 2005, I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in International Relations and a general focus in the area of environmental politics. Between 2005 and 2007 I completed an M.Phil in IR at Wadham College, Oxford. I worked for five years for the Canadian federal government, including completing the Accelerated Economist Training Program, and then completed a PhD in Political Science at the University of Toronto in 2023.
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A related video on HIV reproduction.
Coiling and replication of DNA
Mitosis in a lily cell (actual video, not animated)
Cellular Visions: The Inner Life of a Cell
What can character animators learn from those who render microscopic worlds in 3D? Plenty.
By Beth Marchant
July 20, 2006 Source: Studio Daily
The Inner Life of a Cell, an eight-minute animation created in NewTek LightWave 3D and Adobe After Effects for Harvard biology students, won’t draw the kind of box office crowds that more ferocious˜and furrier˜digital creations did last Christmas. But it will share a place along side them in SIGGRAPH’s Electronic Theatre show, which will run for three days during the 33rd annual exhibition and conference in Boston next month. Created by XVIVO, a scientific animation company near Hartford, CT, the animation illustrates unseen molecular mechanisms and the ones they trigger, specifically how white blood cells sense and respond to their surroundings and external stimuli.
The American Society for Cell Biology has a video library.
Look at it once you are done your thesis!
The vesicle-dragging Myosin motor protein is definitely my favourite part of the video. It is just so comic looking.
You can see it about 3:50 into the version of the video with explanatory narration.
This blog may interest you: cocktail party physics
Science In Silico
Computer simulations and visualizations are performing the thought experiments of the 21st century and pushing the limits of human vision and imagination.
Direct link
Creationist crooks pilfer Harvard’s work
Category: Creationism
Posted on: November 20, 2007 5:04 PM, by PZ Myers
Once upon a time, a company named XVIVO put together a beautiful computer animation of molecular activity in the cell — you may have already seen it. I have some quibbles with it — there is no water shown, and the behavior of the molecules is too simplistic, without enough noise (molecular behavior at the scale shown ought to be rich with Brownian phenomena) — but it’s dramatic and spectacular, which was the intent. The whole thing was made to inspire and inform Harvard biology students, so it’s actually owned by Harvard and XVIVO.
See also:
Entertaining physics demonstrations
December 13th, 2007
Physics animations
Tuesday, September 4th, 2007